Don’t even start with me about how tough the modern millitay man or woman has it.

The 10th Armored was to drive on the Saar, take the bridge intact at Merzig and keep going. The Group moved its Command Post to Ritzing, France, and following the attack, advanced to Wehingen, Germany. Here heavy enemy artillery fire resulted in four casualties, two killed, two wounded, one truck destroyed, and the kitchen truck damaged. Upon reaching the river the bridge was found blown and on the 6th of December the 10th was pulled out of the line. The Group Command POL again withdrew from Germany to Launstroff, France, with its mission changed to direct support of the Cavalry which had relieved the Tankers and held a line generally along the dragons teeth between the Saar and Moselle.

Colonel JOHN E. THEIMER replaced Colonel CONDER as Group Commander on the 12th of December. Twice during December the Group was required to transfer 5% of its Table or Organization strength to the Infantry.

When the enemy made his attack in the Ardennes the 274th and 695th Armored Field Artillery Battalions were taken from the Group and for the night 21-22 December the defense of the line between the rivers depended on the Cavalry, one medium artillery battalion (689th) and the 5th Field Artillery Group Headquarters, and Headquarters Battery. However on the 22nd the 284th Field Artillery Battalion (105mm howitzer, truck drawn), the 558th Field Artillery Battalion (155 gun, self-propelled) were attached to the Group, infantry of the 90th Division took over approximately half of the Cavalry sector, and the forces were echeloned in depth to make a formidable defensive system. The Group retained its mission with the Cavalry and so moved its Command Post to Kirsch, where it remained until the 3rd of February 1945. While here the mission was changed to general support in the zone of the 94th Infantry Division when that Division relieved the 90th and took over in the zone of the Cavalry, the Cavalry being shifted to the right flank, on the 8th of January. An elaborate defensive plan was made with two delaying positions and the final defensive position in the Maginot Line. Routes were reconnoitered, Observation Posts selected and surveyed in, and positions prepared.

On the 27th of December P47 fighters committed hostile acts. and dropped bombs on the battery position of B Battery 733rd Field Artillery Battalion. They were engaged by our ground defenses and one was shot down. The pilot, an American Major, read his map incorrectly for the front lines had not changed in that sector in over a month.

After the Hun lost his initiative in the north, the 94th engaged in limited objective attacks. To prevent a major breakthrough the Germans brought the 11th Panzer Division into the line. Attrition on the material of this division was very high. All the air sections of the Group cooperated in an original patrol from the first faint light of dawn until the last sometimes later glimmer at dusk, so effectively that approximately forty of the sixty-five tanks originally brought in by the Germans were known to have been destroyed. The weapons primarily used by the air observers for these tank missions was the 155mm howitzer of the 689th Field Artillery Battalion.

From the unit history of my father’s unit, the 5th Field Artillery Group.

Thanksgiving 1942

The 5th Armored Artillery Group was activated at Camp Young, California on the 5th of September 1942. The Division Artillery Command of the 5th Armored Division had been taken from the Division and redesignated 5th Armored Artillery Group, consisting of Colonel JOHN M. WILLEMS commanding, a staff of two officers, and an enlisted strength of seventeen. Since it was the first unit of its kind, it was an experiment by the War Department in the face of many difficulties not immediately apparent, which, however, began to appear very shortly after activation.

Thanksgiving 1943

Beginning the first part of November all equipment, except organizational, was turned in. This included the dismantling of “The Palace”, our Command Post truck, which with continuous improvement, had become quite a modern office. On the l4th and l5th the Group moved to a staging area near Palermo, boarded the AORANGI on the l7th, and sailed for the United Kingdom on the l8th. The 5th Field Artillery Group docked and disembarked at Glasgow, Scotland, on the 9th of December and arrived by train in the Banbury / Bloxham area on the 10th. The luxury that confronted the men upon arrival at their billets was quite unexpected. Straw mattresses on beds in heated houses and huts with running water and showers readily available was a long step from living in the field in the mud, rain, and muck to which they were accustomed with no shelter other than pyramidal or pup tents. Malaria, jaundice, and the periodic epidemics of dysentery had taken their toll on the health and welfare of the men.

Thanksgiving 1944

On the 31st of October the Group moved to an assembly area at Pierrepont in preparation for the crossing of the Moselle at Thionville by the 90th and the flanking of Metz by the 10th Armored. From the 8th to the l5th of November, the Group supported the 90th in establishing a bridgehead across the flooded Moselle and on the 15th crossed the Thionville bridge with Task Force CHAMBERLAIN of the 10th Armored. The Group supported the 10th, slashing through fanatical resistance until the last escape route out of the fortress city had been cut and the Division was relieved by the 90th lnfantry Division. The direction of attack of the 10th Armored was to be northeast with Saarburg as the objective. The Group Headquarters entered Germany for the first time on the 22nd of November 1944 with its Command Post in the village of Eft. On this date our forces were stopped by the dragons teeth and pillboxes of the Siegfried Switch Line between the Saar and Moselle Rivers. The 3rd Cavalry Group relieved Combat Command A on the 28th and the Group received the additional mission of supporting the Cavalry.

Thanksgiving 1945 – HOME!

Baghdad 2007

“The Thanksgiving Day dinner is the meal of meals for the Army,” said Philadelphia native, Chief Warrant Officer Shawn M. Malinowski, the food service advisor with Multi-National Division – Baghdad. “There is no money, no effort, nothing wasted on this day.”

While dining facilities feed a lot of mouths at every meal they serve, they can expect to see a significant increase in that number on Thanksgiving Day.

The Pegasus Dining Facility, near the MND-B headquarters, served approximately 2,500 people Thanksgiving dinner last year, when only 1,500 people were served at an average meal. This year the dining facility is serving approximately 2,500 people at an average meal, so it can be expected to serve anywhere between 3,000 and 5,000 people for the holiday meal, Malinowski said.

Middle East 2007

“Historically, Thanksgiving dinner is one of the most family-oriented meals that there is,” said Ray Miller, director of subsistence for DSCP, the agency that supplies meals to the military worldwide. “When you are deployed and you’re not with (family), … it’s a taste of home wherever you are.”

Hundreds of thousands of troops will dine on turkey, ham, cranberry sauce, assorted pies and more. While this all sounds very “Norman Rockwell” normal, there’s nothing normal about the amount of food needed to feed that many troops.

The employees sent 342,382 pounds of turkey alone. More than 15,000 containers of stuffing mix and about 13,000 containers of white potatoes will join nearly 120,000 pounds of shrimp and a combined total of 249,357 pounds of ham and beef, as well.

“It would be like 100 tractor-trailers pulling up outside your house to deliver Thanksgiving dinner,” Miller said, describing just how much food was sent to the Middle East for the dinner.

And at the back of the very last tractor-trailer would be the one thing needed to finish the meal in fine holiday tradition: nearly 163,500 pies.

As for those with no access to a dining hall, they’re not destined to eat the same old everyday field rations. They, too, will get a turkey dinner on Thanksgiving Day.

“We … have provided a special ration meal called an URG-E (unitized group ration – express),” Miller said. “It won’t be the turkey, but it’ll be a turkey meal. It’s our attempt to at least try to get something to the folks that are on the far end of the supply chain.”

Medal of Honor – Posthumous Award

Sometimes you need to read about a real hero.

Citation:

*LUMMUS, JACK

Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. Born: 22 October 1915, Ennie, Tex. Appointed from: Texas.

Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as leader of a Rifle Platoon attached to the 2d Battalion, 27th Marines, 5th Marine Division, in action against enemy Japanese forces on Iwo Jima in the Volcano Islands, 8 March 1945.

Resuming his assault tactics with bold decision after fighting without respite for 2 days and nights, 1st Lt. Lummus slowly advanced his platoon against an enemy deeply entrenched in a network of mutually supporting positions. Suddenly halted by a terrific concentration of hostile fire, he unhesitatingly moved forward of his front lines in an effort to neutralize the Japanese position. Although knocked to the ground when an enemy grenade exploded close by, he immediately recovered himself and, again moving forward despite the intensified barrage, quickly located, attacked, and destroyed the occupied emplacement. Instantly taken under fire by the garrison of a supporting pillbox and further assailed by the slashing fury of hostile rifle fire, he fell under the impact of a second enemy grenade but, courageously disregarding painful shoulder wounds, staunchly continued his heroic 1-man assault and charged the second pillbox, annihilating all the occupants.

Subsequently returning to his platoon position, he fearlessly traversed his lines under fire, encouraging his men to advance and directing the fire of supporting tanks against other stubbornly holding Japanese emplacements. Held up again by a devastating barrage, he again moved into the open, rushed a third heavily fortified installation and killed the defending troops. Determined to crush all resistance, he led his men indomitably, personally attacking foxholes and spider traps with his carbine and systematically reducing the fanatic opposition until, stepping on a land mine, he sustained fatal wounds.

By his outstanding valor, skilled tactics, and tenacious perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds, 1st Lt. Lummus had inspired his stouthearted marines to continue the relentless drive northward, thereby contributing materially to the success of his regimental mission. His dauntless leadership and unwavering devotion to duty throughout sustain and enhance the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life in the service of his country.

W. Thomas Smith, Jr

Then in a final effort to crush all resistance in the battalion’s front, he ordered a platoon assault against an enemy emplacement. As the Marines charged, Lummus stepped on a landmine. The enormous blast that followed could be heard across the entire island.

Numbed and with ears ringing, Lummus’ Marines could still make out the familiar Texas drawl of their platoon commander shouting, “Forward! Keep moving!” They could hear him, but they couldn’t see him. Not until the blast’s smoke and dust cleared. Then they saw the blackened figure of a man bent over and trying to push himself up on one of his elbows.

The Marines initially thought their lieutenant was standing in a hole. Then there was the horror of what they were looking at: Lummus was upright on two bloody stumps: His legs had been blown off, and much of his lower trunk was missing.

Several of the younger Marines, weeping like children, ran to his side. Some of the older Marines briefly considered a mercy shooting. But Lummus kept urging them forward: “Dammit, keep moving!,” he uttered. “You can’t stop now!”

According to the official report. “Their tears turned to rage. They swept an incredible 300 yards over impossible ground… There was no question that the dirty, tired men, cursing and crying and fighting, had done it for Jack Lummus.”

Hours later on a stretcher bound for the operating table, an ashen-faced Lummus managed a smile for the Navy surgeon and quipped, “Well, Doc, I guess the New York Giants have lost the services of a damned good end.”

Smith has received word that Lt. Lummus will be honored by the New York Giants on Veterans Day at Giants Stadium, for the Dallas game.

Wow! This leaves me speechless. Chris writes another great story you won’t see in the media. Too bad for them.

DVIDS
By Spc. Chris McCann, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division Public Affairs

The 10th Mountain Division’s song recalls the unit’s “glorious history” in World War II.

Fort Drum, N.Y., the division’s home, has streets named Lake Garda, Riva Ridge and Mount Belvedere, after major battles in the Italian campaign. But all of that can seem distant to today’s Soldiers.

Maj. Joshua Sparling, surgeon for the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), is a 10th Mountain “legacy” whose grandfather fought on Riva Ridge and Belvedere.

Sparling, a native of Raymond, Maine, has been with the 10th Mtn. Div. twice. He first joined the Army for four years in 1996 as a reservist during medical school. In September 2001, while serving as a general medical officer at the Pentagon, he was attached to part of the division during a rotation to the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, La. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11th, the deployment schedule changed, and Sparling went back to the Pentagon.

After his dermatology residency at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, which ended in July 2006, he came to Fort Drum, where he worked at Guthrie Clinic. He volunteered for a deployment, and was chosen to join the 2nd BCT.

Sparling’s grandfather, Herbert Colburn, was an avid skier. When the 10th Mountain Division was founded and the Army needed ski troops, Colburn, then 25, volunteered for duty. He left in 1943, spending more than a year in training at Camp Hale, Colo., and then deploying to Italy until the division ended its operations in the European theater. His wife, Marion, was pregnant when he left, and their first daughter was 18 months old when he returned home and saw her for the first time.

Colburn, a private first class, was assigned to the 10th Anti-Tank Battalion and was awarded a Bronze Star Medal with “V” for valor during the Mount Belvedere campaign. Under enemy fire, he placed barbed wire to keep the Germans from crossing a ravine. He was discharged after the war ended.

After his discharge, he put his service behind him and became an insurance salesman for the next 40 years until he retired.

“I never got to take him up to Fort Drum,” Sparling said. “Of course, when he was in the 10th Mountain, they were based in Colorado. But I did get to take him to the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.

“It was a moving experience; my idea was to get him to see it, but I didn’t anticipate the people coming up to him to shake his hand and thank him for his service,” he said.

Colburn began suffering from Alzheimer’s disease in his 80s, which sapped many of his memories.

“When we went to the memorial, I know he understood what it was and the significance of it, but that might be about it,” Sparling said.

Sparling said he grew up very close to his grandfather.

“He was my surrogate father,” he said. “I was much closer to him than to my father. I would say he was the major male role model in my life. But he didn’t talk about it much; most of those guys didn’t. I was too young to understand the real meaning of it – war was a distant idea. And the last five years of his life, when I was interested, he had a lot of memory problems.”

In a way, however, the disease gave Sparling a chance to spend more time with his grandfather.

“They lived in the same house in Holyoke, Mass., and went to the same church for almost 60 years,” Sparling said. “But when my grandmother’s Alzheimer’s got bad, he couldn’t take care of her because he had his own memory problems, so they went to Olny, Md., about 20 minutes away from where I lived while I was working at Walter Reed. My wife and I would take him on outings and walks, and took lots of photos.”

Sparling said he remains impressed by his grandfather’s stoicism.

“Those people had an attitude that it was a terrible thing that happened, but they were back and moving on,” Sparling said. “We lost a lot of historical data because of that, I think, although there’s been an effort in the last decade to rectify that. But mostly it’s too late.

“Seven years or so ago, my brother videotaped my grandfather and asked him about the war, and he was very open about it. It may have been the Alzheimer’s, but he told us things that no one in the family had known before, like that he’d shot at someone and thought he saw them get hit, and that that had weighed on him.”

Colburn also revealed a side of the war that Sparling finds similar to the conflict in which he currently serves.

“He said the worst part on Riva Ridge was that the enemy would shoot mortars every night at exactly the same time, and it was a powerful psychological weapon. The Americans would sit there, knowing that in 15 minutes the mortars would start and someone would die, and who it would be was just a roll of the dice. I think the corollary is improvised explosive devices in Iraq; it has the same psychological effect, having no control over the environment. If it blows up, it could do nothing, or it could kill you.”

Another rough part for his grandparents, he said, was the mail.

“Here, I can e-mail my wife and call her almost every day. My grandmother would go weeks or months without hearing from her husband, no word at all, and she wouldn’t know whether it was just because the mail was slow or if something had happened to him. And then she would get eight letters all at once, because the mail would build up before they sent it out.”

Sparling and his grandfather are the only two in their extended family to join the Army, and Sparling said it’s very strange that he is now in the same division.

“The odds are so slim,” he said. “I’m a dermatologist, and Fort Drum only got a position for a dermatologist five years ago. If I’d joined earlier, or if my predecessor had not finished his assignment there, it wouldn’t have happened. And there are very few dermatologists that are deployed.”

Sparling said he still has his grandfather’s army jacket with the patches and rank insignia.

“The unit patch is exactly the same as the one I have on,” Sparling said with a smile.

He said he plans to go to the veterans’ ceremony on Whiteface Mountain, near Fort Drum, when he returns from deployment.

An interesting story.

DoD

The Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that a small team of Japanese and U.S. specialists is visiting Attu Island, Alaska, in search of information which may lead them to remains of missing Japanese soldiers.

With support from the Department of Defense, the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the team of five Japanese and three Americans arrived Thursday for a four day mission. The team is investigating potential loss or burial sites where the remains of Japanese soldiers may be found. The team’s findings will be evaluated by the U.S. and Japanese governments to determine if follow-on excavations are called for.

Primary airlift for the team was provided by the U.S. Coast Guard on a regularly-scheduled C-130 airlift mission from Kodiak to Attu Island. While visiting the island, the team is being housed at the long range navigation station where some Coast Guardsmen have volunteered to assist in the investigations. Attu Island is under the management and protection of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service which administers the Aleutian Islands National Wildlife Refuge. At the end of Alaska’s Aleutian island chain, Attu is the westernmost point of land of the United States.

In June 1942, a unit of the Japanese Army occupied Attu, capturing and imprisoning many of its inhabitants. U.S. forces began action to recapture the small island in May 1943, where fierce hand-to-hand battles led to about 540 American and 2,300 Japanese deaths. It was the site of the only land battle in WWII in North America.

Shortly after the war, 235 sets of Japanese remains were recovered on Attu by U.S. forces and reburied at Ft. Richardson, near Anchorage, Alaska. The Japanese later disinterred those remains, cremated them as part of a religious ceremony and reburied them at the same location.

The Japanese government assisted U.S. investigators last month in a visit to Iwo Jima in search of information related to American WWII MIAs.